This is what Oscar says, and it’ll be in the book.

I sometimes wonder if the people in my life exist—if I bring them in—so as to afford me objects from which to hang my arguments and perceptions and narratives. To hang entertainments, really, and to stand around me as mirrors as I try, vainly, to see and understand myself.

I sometimes wonder if in teen times it was too hard to be all things so I picked part of me and mastered it, then that mastery expired and with it, seemingly, all associated potentials.

I sometimes think about the zeitgeist. It’s a thing I think about. I wonder how to grasp it, and if grasping is a superfluous act for something that’s already there all around. It needs only to be inhaled, it’s our air, and we take it for granted just the same.

I sometimes wonder why it’s so hard to live as yourself. That’s something I think about too. How it’s so hard. For so many of us. Then I think about how strange it is to think about something as grand as an “us,” so inclusive. I’m out and looking. But I guess what’s seen is the same, all the same.

Every day we see the year—how many times each? On watches and clocks on screens on mail and on and on and on. Rumpelstiltskin is 4000 years old—who knew the year then? Who cared to count, and what were their names and what were they afraid of?